Uses of Hand-Helds as Assistive Technologies for People
with Disabilities

We are looking at how handheld devices, such as Personal Digital Assistants
(PDAs) like PalmOS devices and PocketPCs, can be helpful for people with physical
disabilities. This research is currently progressing along two tracks:

We are studying the use of a PDA as an alternative input device for computers

We are looking at how to automatically create remote controls for everyday
appliances that will be usable by people with disabilities.

We believe that by using commercial, off-the-shelf hardware and adapting software
which also has significant mainstream usefulness, we can provide increased benefits
at low cost to people with disabilities.

Disability Related Problems

People with Muscular Dystrophy (MD) and certain other muscular and nervous
system disorders such as Cerebral Palsy (CP) may lose their gross motor control
while retaining fine motor control. The result is that they may have difficulty
operating a mouse and keyboard. However, they can often still use their fingers
to control a pencil or stylus, and thus can use a handheld computer such as
a Palm.

Hand-Helds as Alternative Input Devices

In our first track of research, we have developed two programs, called RemoteCommander
and Shortcutter, that allow
the handheld to substitute for the mouse and keyboard of a PC. RemoteCommander
allows all keyboard and mouse functions to be performed using the PDA, and includes
support for word completion and word prediction. Shortcutter allows custom panels
of controls to be created, to make it easier to perform specific common or difficult
functions in specific applications. Our tests with a variety of children and
adults show that this software can be very useful for some people.

Downloadable Applications

You can download the standard Pebbles distribution, which has all the standard
Pebbles applications, including RemoteCommander and Shortcutter. See the standard
download page.

For the Palm, we have a special
download for the software for people with disabilities, that has the latest
(undocumented and only partially tested) versions. This might be better for
people with disabilities. This download also includes two testing programs useful
for measuring the speed and accuracy of typing and selecting objects.

Changes in this version since the official V5 release:

Ability to hit hotsync while in RemoteCommander, and have the PC automatically
switch to hotsync and return to PebblesPC.

Word prediction in RemoteCommander! To use the new word prediction mechanism,
you will need to load RmtCmdWords.pdb from the Palm directory onto your Palm.
Note this big file takes a long time to load--maybe 1/2 hour! So just be patient.
Then go to the Options/Preferences screen on the Palm and choose the Word
Prediction option.

If you load both RmtCmdWords.pdb and RmtCmdWordsBk.pdb into the Palm (which
will take twice as long!), then the option to reset the Palm's database of
word predictions will be available. We will use this to make comparison measurements
of speed and prediction accuracy.

The PC side of Remote Commander can log all the keystrokes for analysis.
In PebblesPC, hit Plugins..., then select RemoteControl and hit Preferences.

Sorry, there is no documentation yet for the special download or its programs.

EdgeWrite

A new assistive text entry method for handheld devices designed to provide
high accuracy and stability of motion for people with motor impairments.
It is also more
accurate than Graffiti for people without motor impairments.